Alessandro Valignano

Alessandro Valignano (February 1539-20 January 1606) was an Italian Jesuit missionary who helped supervise the introduction of Catholicism to East Asia, especially to Japan.

Biography
Alessandro Valignano was born in Chieti, Kingdom of Naples in 1539, and he studied Christian theology at the University of Padua. He was ordained into the Society of Jesus at the age of 34, and he was appointed Visitor of Missions in the Indies (India, China, and Japan). He arrived in Macau in September 1578, and, from 1579 to 1582, he made his first visit to Japan. He devoted efforts to nurturing Japanese priests, and he was responsible for introducing Catholicism to Japan. In 1580, he turned a recently vacated Buddhist monastery in Arima Province into a seminary, and sixty Japanese joined the Jesuits as novices. Soon, the Jesuits became so powerful that they effectively ran Nagasaki, which grew into an international port rivaling Goa or Macau; the Jesuits had a concrete monopoly in taxation over all imported goods coming into Japan. In 1585, the Pope ordered an immediate cessation of all mercantile activities by the Society. During the 1590s, persecution during the reign of Hideyoshi Toyotomi led to a decline in the strength of Christianity in Japan, and Valignano died in Macau, where he had founded St. Paul's College, in 1606.